


Protective

by kickassanakin



Series: justice will prevail, you say? [4]
Category: One Piece
Genre: Doffy @ Law: NO DOUBLES BITCH, Doffy has a moral crisis, Gen, So there's some murder in this one, Suicidal Thoughts, marine AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-26
Updated: 2018-10-26
Packaged: 2019-08-08 00:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16418681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kickassanakin/pseuds/kickassanakin
Summary: Doflamingo has had this kid for less than a day, but if anything happened to the boy, he'd kill everyone in this room and then himself.





	Protective

**Author's Note:**

> i love how conflicted doffy is and i love forcing him to do good things

When he fought, that’s when he let it all out.

All his rage and pain and fear –  all the little annoyances that had pent up inside that he can’t let go, every time something small had ticked him off, he keeps that shit bottled up, and when he fights for the sake of justice, that’s when he lets it erupt.

He feels terrible when it’s all over. Or, more accurately, he feels like shit when he’s killed all these fucking pirates and he’s still angry.

Some context:

Donquixote Doflamingo has a special job in the navy. He keeps his ear to the underground, and gets rid of the most dangerous scum this world has to offer. When he picked up on a pirate group in the North Blue that was on the up and up, trafficking drugs, guns, and humans, he decided it was time for him to take a little visit back to his old hometown.

To be honest, it wasn’t the various accounts of trafficking that piqued his interest. It was the name of the pirate group in question.

They called themselves the Diamante Pirates. The name, when he first saw it, stirred something in his brain. A terrible chill that spiked down his spine.

He remembered Diamante. He remembered Pica. Vergo, too.

But most of all, he remembered Trebol. The man who gave him the gun. The man who wanted to _use_ him.

Donquixote Doflamingo did not get _used_. Trebol, however, had gotten the closest to it. And Doflamingo would never forget that. He could remember in perfectly clarity the way Trebol spoke to him, the way he told the young boy how special he was, how he had been destined for greatness.

He was going to hunt Trebol down and he was going to make that sniveling little worm _suffer_.

So he headed out to the North Blue. Tracked down where the Diamante Pirates were holed up. It was a small warehouse in the port town of Spider Miles. It didn't look particularly evil, but once inside it was like an ant nest of pirates. They crawled all over the place, carrying weapons to and fro. He had stumbled onto one of the weapons dealing facilities.

To his continued frustration, none of the original four were at that particular location. He would have to keep looking.

But it didn’t mean he wouldn’t take out the other pirates that _were_ there.

Once inside the hideout, he flexed his fingers and sent razor-sharp strings flying. His coat, fresh and pristine, could afford to get a little blood on it. He didn’t particularly care for the color white, anyways.

Killing always made him… feel. What that feeling was, he couldn’t say. But he felt _something_. Killing was easy. It was almost fun, sometimes.

And that thought scared him more than anything else. It made him remember the click-snap of the gun in his hand when he killed his father.

What was a little more blood on his hands? He’d already done the worst thing he could ever do. There was no coming back from that. He was going to hell, and he was fine with that. He had paved his own road at ten years old.

But at least he could keep the ones he loved from going down the same path. If he was killing these pirates, Rosi wouldn’t have to.

Rosi would have spared them. They would keep doing horrible things if they had been spared. He would suffer if these pirates escaped alive. That was how he justified it, at least. That’s what he told himself at night, when the screams in his head kept him awake for hours.

He couldn’t do good things. He could only kill, and kill, and kill. But Rosi was _good_. Doflamingo would do anything to protect his little brother. He would commit atrocity after atrocity if it kept Rosinante safe.

After the massacre – and there was no other way to describe it – he stood there among the bodies, and he still felt so _angry_.

Trebol hadn’t been there. None of the important people had been there, just some whiny pirate lackeys who died too quickly.  

Justice had been served. He had gotten rid of a place where terrible things were happening. The Diamante Pirates wouldn’t return to this island, hopefully.

But he hadn’t done what he had set out to do, not really. And it ate at him.

He kicked a body. It rolled a few feet, then limply stopped against another pair of shoes.

Much smaller shoes.

Attached to two very pale, skinny legs.

A boy had walked into this scene. A boy with a sickly pallor and a thin frown. He wore a silly, fluffy hat and had a band of grenades strapped to his chest.

He couldn’t have been more than ten years old.

“Hey, kid,” Doflamingo said carefully, “Uh. What are you doing here?”

“Trying to join the Diamante Pirates.” The kid gestured uncaringly at the carnage around him. “You really fucked that up for me, didn’t you?”

Wow, he had a mouth on him.

“Well. They were pirates,” Doflamingo said awkwardly, “It’s… kind of my job to get rid of them.”

The kid narrowed his eyes. “Great.” He stalked up to Doflamingo. “Well, I might as well kill you.” He reached for a grenade.

“Uh-uh, hold on there.” Doflamingo flicked a finger and froze the little boy to the spot. “You’re no match for me, kid.”

The boy glared at him with pure fury. Something about his eyes struck a chord in Doflamingo.

Maybe it was his anger, or his willingness to kill, or maybe it was the way his eyes reflected something dark, something dangerous, something _sad_ , but the marine felt a strange kinship with this murderous little boy. “What happened to you?”

“Fuck off!” The kid snarled. “I don’t have to tell you shit.”

Oh man. It was like looking into a mirror of himself at that age. That thought made him feel _really_ uncomfortable.

“What, are you going to kill me like you killed all these other pirates?” The boy spat. “Go ahead. I won’t live long anyways.” He strained against the strings, regardless of his words. “I just want to kill as many people as I can before I die.”

The marine felt a little sick. “Have you killed anyone yet?”

The boy’s eyes darkened with disappointment. Thank _fuck_ , the kid was a weakling.

Looking at this feral child, Doflamingo couldn’t help but feel… responsible. If he didn’t do something, this boy was going to go on and do something horrible.

He was going to die anyways, apparently. Some kind of sickness, from the look of it. It would be easy to make it quick. It might even be a mercy.

But the kid had such big, sad, angry eyes, and for some reason, Doflamingo just couldn’t find it in himself to pull the trigger.

Fuck. What the hell was wrong with him?

“If you don’t kill me now, you’ll regret it!”

“Shut up, kid.” He was too busy having a moral crisis to worry about shitty little kids whining about murder or whatever.

Hey!

He knew somebody who was pretty good with shitty little kids. Well, he dealt with Doflamingo as a kid, so that made him practically an expert.

Except… well, Sengoku was fleet admiral these days. He had so much more to worry about. Back when Doffy and Rosi were just kids, he had the time to worry about them. Nowadays he had to worry about the entire navy.

But there was still one other person who might be able to help.

“Hey, kid. What’s your name?” Doflamingo pulled out his den-den mushi and dialed the right number.

“Fuck you!”

Okay, cool. He could roll with that.

The den-den mushi opened its eyes as the person on the other end of the line picked up. “Hello?”

“Rosi! It’s your brother.”

“What did you do this time?”

“Funny story. So, I’m in the North Blue, checking out some underground activity, you know how it is.” Doflamingo hadn’t exactly told his brother that he had gone off to kill pirates to sate his father-killing grudge. That was the kind of thing that would land him in therapy more often than he already went.

“… Interesting. Go on.” Rosi did not sound pleased, but that was kind of to be expected.

“Well, this kid showed up in the middle of this bust, and uh, well, he’s.” Doflamingo paused as he searched for the right word. “Um. Like me?”

The den-den mushi made a face that could only be described as _pained_. “Uh-huh.”

“I mean, me when I was… a kid.” Doffy swallowed, a little nervously.

That got the den-den to frown. “What’s his name?”

“Apparently it’s ‘Fuck you!’, but I could be wrong.” Doffy shot the kid an amused glance, but the look he got back was full of rage.

Rosi chuckled. “Wow. That _is_ like you.”

“Thanks.” He shouldn’t feel proud of that.

“Bring him back to the HQ. I’ll see if we can do anything for him.” Rosi paused. “And… Doffy?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t go on those missions anymore. Please.”

The strange, light feeling in his chest that he got from talking to his brother immediately turned to a rock and sank down to the bottom of his stomach. He grimaced. “I can’t promise that.” He looked down, remembered all the blood, then closed his eye. “Sorry, Rosi.”

He was quiet for a few moments. Then, “We’ll talk about it later. See you soon.” The den-den clicked off.

He turned to the kid. “Listen. We met at a drug bust or something. You can’t tell Rosi about this.”

The kid curled his lip back in some sort of snarl. “Or what, you’ll kill me?”

… Well, shit. Threatening to kill someone wasn’t effective if they didn’t fear death. And, you know, if you couldn’t really bring yourself to kill them.

“I’ll release you if you promise not to use the grenades.” Doflamingo figured bargaining might work. Kids were into that sort of thing, right?

The boy stewed for a moment, then conceded. “Fine.”

The marine flicked his fingers again and the boy was free. He turned around and walked towards the exit of the warehouse. “Now, I was just going to fly back, but I’ll go commandeer a boat and—”

Sharp pain exploded in his side. He felt a searing hot warmth seep through his clothes and at once he turned back to the little boy, who held a bloody knife. “You fucking shit!”

“It’s not a grenade.” The boy smirked.

Doffy twitched his hand and stopped the boy from coming after him a second time. With the boy tied up again, he quickly administered some quick first aid and sewed up his brand new stab wound with his strings. “Holy shit. You are the fucking worst.”

“Then just kill me already!” The boy shouted. “There’s no point in doing anything else! I hate marines, I hate the government, I hate you all!”

“You made that painfully obvious already.” Doflamingo finished with his stitches and flicked his wrist, forcing the kid to follow after him as he walked out of the warehouse.

“Help! Help! This strange man is kidnapping me!” The boy shouted as soon as they got outside.

Doflamingo saw red. “If you don’t shut the fuck up, I will sew your god damned mouth shut.”

The boy sneered. “Oh yeah, I bet that Rosi guy would _really_ appreciate you doing that.”

Fuck this kid.

“I am trying to help you, you little brat!” Doflamingo hissed. “Why can’t you see that?”

“The marines didn’t help the Flevance when we needed it, so why the fuck should I trust you now?” The boy seemed to have snapped. Even restrained, he looked wild, like he would stab Doflamingo again if given the chance. “I’d rather die right now than let some disgusting marine take me anywhere.”

Flevance?

Ohh. Fuck.

He knew all about the White Town.

That would explain… a lot, really. Shit.

He was never directly involved in the suppression of Flevance. The whole thing had left a terrible taste in his mouth, and he knew it was because the people higher up on the ladder had ordered it.

He was a marine, but he didn’t trust the world government. If it were just, things like Flevance wouldn’t happen.

What happened to _him_ wouldn’t have happened.

Suddenly, Doflamingo couldn’t be mad at this kid anymore. It was as if all his anger just… dissipated. Even the pain from his stab wound seemed to fade. “You’re a survivor of Flevance?”

“Not for long.” He growled. “I have three years and two months. If you don’t kill me, that is.”

“I’m not going to kill you.” Suddenly, Doflamingo felt very, _very_ tired. “I’m – I’m sorry.”

And he meant it.

For some reason, this angry, traumatized, dying little kid had made him feel a sort of pain he had never really felt before. He had always been furious with the world government for what happened to him, but he and Rosi would never be bothered by them again. He knew things they didn’t want anyone to know.

This kid didn't have that luxury. The world government wanted to hunt him down, to silence him, to keep their corruption a secret. But Doflamingo had the power to keep this kid safe, too. White Lead Disease was considered punishable by death, but it wasn’t contagious. He wouldn’t let the government win. Not this time.

Doflamingo wasn’t going to let this little boy die because of the evil of those with more power.

“I’m going to take you to my brother, and we’re going to save you.”

He had only felt this kind of burning protectiveness for his brother before. But even now, he could feel the fire of his wrath forming an extra spot in his heart for this kid. He realized, in a strange moment of clarity, that he was willing to do terrible things to protect him.

“I won't let anything happen to you. You're one of mine.”

**Author's Note:**

> lemme know what you think!~


End file.
